I am a legend

I am a Legend (original title I amndt Legend ) is a novel of Science-fiction of the author states-unien Richard Matheson published in 1954.

Synopsis

In a near future, he tells the tragic destiny of the last alive man, only human being not to have undergone the pangs of a pandemia which unrelentingly transforms the human beings infected into vampires. Monotony of the horror, Richard Matheson axis his account around this incongruous situation where each gesture pain-killer is in fact the last sudden start of humanity to protect itself from degenerated different sound.

Summary

Robert Neville is the last survivor of a pandemia of bacterial origin which causes, at the victims, a state close to the Vampirisme. This pandemia is of obscure origin, apparently related to storms of dust which blow regularly on the deserted cities of this post-apocalyptic world. It, only, will hold head lasting of the months with the population, her neighbors and his former friends become since scatterbrained vampires awaking the night, scraping the door and the walls and calling it so that he joins them. He lives in a barricaded house, strengthened against the night attacks, leaves only during the day to kill in their sleep some of these monsters of a pile in full heart and to leave in the search of products of first need, then withdraws himself at his place with fallen the night to survive and drown his anguish in alcohol. Robert Neville awakes each morning in a climate of horror, choked by loneliness and the remorses, sometimes, a corpse of woman shredded are deposited by the others in front of the door.

Topic of the vampirism

If this novel reactivates the traditional topic and rebattu vampirism, it is to treat it in an original way. The vampires with which the author confronts us in his novel have a double face, that, night and destroying, animal brutality assoiffée of blood, and that, semi-diurnal and more astonishing, of a finally viable alternative to the human society become biologically unsuited to its new contaminated environment. While the last man fights hopelessly to save the vestiges of Humanity, the néo-vampires gather in community and are organized for finally providing the foundations of a new business promised with the only possible future on this depopulated Earth.

The references to the vampirism are not done without humor, because the hero, confronted with these beings of sorry reputation, has of another reflex at the beginning of the novel only to seek in an abandoned library a specimen of the Dracula of Bram Stoker to find the means there of fighting them and of killing them. Thus he will not escape from the chains from garlic, the piles out of wooden and the repulsive Christian crosses. Then, its personal evolution and its best comprehension of the situation will make it little by little leave this mythological thought to tackle problem in the more scientific and bacteriological way, exchanging its condiments and its piles against a microscope and chemicals. The hero will manage scientifically to include/understand the effect of the pile planted in the heart by a succession of chemical reactions related to the unknown bacterium. The vampires will do as much besides of it, directing their research towards a chemical means to support - at least during a time - light of day.

As Robert Neville thus plays the part tragic of the last obstacle to the advent of this new social order and biological which the vampires represent, it must be eliminated. As a last Man, condemned to died by a court of the vampires improvised, it will enter the “legend thus”. One will note in the passing the subtle play on the traditional registers: in the world of human of yesterday, the vampires were only one romantic legend, in the world of the vampires of tomorrow, the Man is dedicated to occupy this space become suddenly vacant of imaginary of legend.

Adaptations

1964 : I am a legend (Italian film, 1963, original title Lastly Uomo Della Terra ) with Vincent Price.
1971 : the Survivor , with Charlton Heston and Anthony Zerbe.
2007 : I am a legend (I amndt Legend) , film American Francis Lawrence with Will Smith left envisaged on December 19th, 2007.

Band announces: http://www.allocine.fr/video/player_gen_cmedia=18735001&cfilm=105557.html

Traditional of the science fiction

This novel is regarded as a great classic of the Science-fiction in the following reference books:

Annick Beguin, 100 principal titles of the science fiction , Cosmos 2000,1981;
Jacques Sadoul, Anthology of the literature of science fiction , Ramsay, 1981;
Science fiction. The ideal library , Albin Michel, 1988;
Lorris Murail, the Masters of the science fiction , Bordered, coll “Compact”, 1993;
Stan Barets, science-fictionnaire , Denoël, coll “Presence of the future”, 1994;
ideal Library of the webzine cosmic Cockroach.
Francis Valéry, Passport for the stars , Denoël, coll Folio SF, 2000.

Criticisms specialized

Jacques Sadoul, History of the modern science fiction. 1911-1984 , Robert Laffont, coll “Elsewhere and tomorrow/Tests”, 1984: With I amndt Legend , Richard Matheson offers to us in 1954 a very original novel which treats in pure archiclassic science fiction one of the topics of fantastic, the vampirism. .

Lorris Murail, the Science fiction , Larousse, coll “Guides Totem”, 1999: The scientific point of view is laughable but the novel functions with wonder. Traditional.

French editions

I am a legend of Richard Matheson, translated from American by Claude Elsen, knew various French editions:

Denoël, coll “Presence of the future”, n°10, 1955 (republications in 1972,1977,1979,1983,1990,1991,1993,1999);
C.A.L., coll “masterpieces of the science fiction and fantastic”, 1973;

A new translation of Nathalie Serval is appeared with the following editions:

Gallimard, coll “Folio SF”, n°53, translation of Nathalie Serval, 2001
Denoël, coll “the Moon of ink”, 2003.

Publication of an extract of the novel in:

To discover the science fiction , Seghers, coll Anthology-youth, 1975.

There exists also a French edition in audio book read by five actors with sound effects and sound environments, SonoBooK 2006.

Quotations

The numbers of page of the quotations which follow refer to the edition of pocket Folio SF (2001) .

“ the power of the vampire holds so that nobody believes in his existence… ”, p.31 (Quotation itself drawn from the Dracula of Bram Stoker); would
“ Which be the reaction of Moslem vampires in front of the cross? ”, p. 77;
“ the world is absurd, thought it, deaths walk there in freedom and I am not astonished any even more… ”, p. 79;
“ the incipient companies is always primitive. ”, p. 185;
“ Now, it is me the monster… ”, p. 190;
“ Robert Neville looked at the people of the Earth. He knew that he did not form part of it. ”, p. 190.

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